


Marry Me

by grapehyasynth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Best Friends, F/M, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-09-19 16:02:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9449327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: “Marry me.”It is only hearing another man say it that Jemma realizes she has been waiting to hear it from Fitz’s lips.**originally from my drabbles collection**





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Per an anon's suggestion, I'm moving series over from my drabbles collections to un-clutter it a bit. But I'm only moving completed series. If you see an uncompleted one over there that you'd like to see moved into its own fic, please let me know.

“Marry me.”

It is only hearing another man say it that Jemma realizes she has been waiting to hear it from Fitz’s lips.

Fitz has no reason to propose to her – they are friends, nothing more – and Jemma has never cared much about the theatrical conventions surrounding proposals and marriages. But the way her boyfriend says it, like it’s an afterthought, something he’s forgotten to do, makes her feel secondary and invisible and frankly pathetic.

And that would simply never be the case with Fitz. He is a man of grand gestures, though even his little gestures are filled with passion. If he were to propose, he would row her across a lake or take her slow-dancing under the stars or hike a mountain with her just to see her expression at the breathtaking view.

It is wrong to think of him in this moment. To miss him, even though they spoke just hours before to arrange to meet for tea later. To wistfully picture the way he folds down his ear when he’s asking her something which he believes is too personal or a transgression. (Would he do the same while proposing?) To crave his arms, to want him to hold her forever.

It is wrong, but that is what happens. Her boyfriend turns to her and says it casually and every thought drops away except _Fitz_.

And maybe it’s only because she suddenly feels angry and vulnerable and he’s the one she would run to or maybe it’s been building for years.

When she glances down at the diamond he’s holding in his palm, she automatically wonders whether Fitz would’ve thought to use a different stone, one more suited to her, to them. Would his fingers have trembled as he held it out to her? Almost certainly. He’d probably have cried a bit, and that would have made her cry a bit, and she wouldn’t have cared.

Now she just feels cold. A bone-deep cold that she’s fairly certain only Fitz can cure.

Panicking, she fumbles out some sort of explanation to her disgruntled boyfriend (disgruntled, not devastated) and runs out of the building. Where can she go from here?


	2. Chapter 2

Jemma’s every synapse has always been attuned to Fitz’s whereabouts at all times, so she knows where he will be when she bursts out of the restaurant and onto the hot sidewalk. She slips off her flats and with them in one hand and her phone in the other, she runs the few blocks to see him.

It’s fourth period, so he’s outside with his class for gym. They are on the playground and he’s trying to teach them kickball, though they’re six-year-olds and don’t seem to understand the appeal of a game where most of the players spend most of the game just standing about. Marcia Downs keeps catching the ball when it’s rolled to her and throwing it back to the pitcher and Colin and Huy have sat down near the water fountain in favor of building towers of pebbles.

Fitz is exasperated and shrill and a bit pink in the cheeks as he herds them, this ridiculous man she loves.

Jemma wraps her fingers through the chain-link fence.“Fitz!” she calls, glad his students are too young to gossip about Teacher’s lady friend.

He’s understandably startled to see her, but he lets his whistle drop to his chest and crosses the pavement, throwing a shadow across her as he stands so close to her on the other side of the fence that his sweater brushes her knuckles.

“Jemma, what’s happened?” he asks urgently, seeing her reddened eyes and the tear tracks down her cheeks. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she insists, not wanting to look away from him even long enough to wipe her cheeks. And she means it, too. She feels more fine than she has in months, or years. “I just wanted … I wanted…”

But what can she possibly say? She cannot dump the reality of what she’s just done on him and expect him to get down on one knee. She’s not sure that’s what she wants anyways, at least not yet.

So instead, she says weakly, “Do you want to get burgers later? I promise not to steal your fries.”

He must sense this is about more than just a diner run because he frowns and replies slowly, “I have parent-teacher conferences tonight, but we could grab milkshakes when that’s done.”

“Milkshakes. Brilliant,” she agrees breathlessly.

She stops at a park on her meandering walk back to her apartment and lays down in the grass to watch the clouds crash like waves made of spun sugar. Maybe someday she will tell Fitz what she did today, what she’s done because of him. Someday when they have been together for years and he won’t think of himself as a rebound, even though every man in her life has been a rebound from Fitz, she sees now.

For now, she wants things to unfold organically between them. She feels very at peace, knowing her eyes are finally wide open, knowing she has found her person. She can’t wait to begin convincing him of that.


	3. Chapter 3

Fitz arrives at the diner later than he’d promised, and he looks nervous as he rushes in the door and pauses on the front mat, searching for her. He’s clutching a bouquet of daffodils he must’ve picked himself, and in his slacks and button-up from the parent-teacher conferences, he must look to all the other patrons like he’s here for a date. 

The thought gives Jemma a thrill and she waves to catch his attention.

“Hi,” he says shyly when he reaches her, eyes roaming her face.

“Hi, Fitz.” She tries to be as bright as possible, to dispel his concern, and honestly it’s not that difficult, when he’s standing there before her, when she’s feeling the way she does.

“These are for you.” He thrusts the flowers at her and retracts his hand the second she’s taken them to scratch at his ear. “I thought you might need something to brighten your day, after…”

She wishes Fitzes were like daffodils, there for her to pluck and carry with her and water and care for, maybe to replant in her garden and keep for herself. She laughs out loud at her own ridiculous train of thought and looks back up at him, her nose in the flowers. “They’re lovely, Fitz, thank you.”

He slides into the booth across from her and flips open his menu, but he doesn’t look at it. “Jemma,” he murmurs, his voice trembling, “did he hurt you?”

“Oh, god, Fitz, no,” she gasps, reaching across the table to cover his hand in hers. “We broke up, but not because of that. Never that.”

“Good,” he says shortly, but his jaw tenses and she imagines how this has been bothering him all afternoon, since he saw her crying by the fence, how he must’ve brooded over this throughout the rest of his school day and the conferences.

“Ironically,” Jemma chuckles, desperate to make him laugh, to make him stop carrying pain for her, “I broke up with him because he asked me to marry him.”

Fitz lowers the specials menu, lips parted. “And you didn’t want to do that?”

Jemma shakes her head, smiling, though she’s ready to cry again, for all sorts of reasons. “No, I’m very sure I didn’t. Not with him, anyway. Which raised all sorts of questions and clarified some things for me, but…”

He’s staring at her and she wonders how much he can inference from her rambling. She blushes, looks down so her hair will hide her eagerness from him, and opens her own menu.

They order milkshakes – Jemma’s tempted to suggest they split one, but hovering that close to Fitz’s face, leaned over the table to reach the straw, she’d definitely do something rash – and slurp away as Fitz recounts some of the more eccentric parents he met tonight. They’re both nearly thirty, but in that booth, Jemma feels like she’s out with her high school sweetheart and he’ll drive her home after in his convertible, or maybe they’ll go to the drive-in.

There’s a dreamy song, the kind perfect for slow dances, playing in the kitchen of the diner and Fitz is trying to recapture his straw with just his tongue and Jemma’s palm is cold from her glass. It’s a moment she could live in forever.

There’s certainly a saying, that when you know who you want to spend the rest of your life with, you want the rest of your life to start right away. It’s a bit simplified and doesn’t account for unexpected variables – how long must one wait after a breakup before telling your best friend of ten years that you love them? – but even if Fitz doesn’t know it, Jemma’s starting her life with him right now, playing footsie under the table, drawing with crayons on the place mats, teasing him for the chocolate mustache he’s developed.

When she gets home, she calls Daisy and begs her to give her permission – by virtue of being the one most tuned in to Social Cues – to tell Fitz tomorrow.

Daisy approves.


	4. Chapter 4

Several people mistake her for a parent as she hurries down the hallways, which she supposes is understandable. She’s stopping by between clients and has still got her pencil skirt and blouse on, and maybe she should wait until she – No. This is happening. It’s happening _today_.

She knocks nervously at Fitz’s open door. His classroom is bright with afternoon sun through the open windows and judging by the paper airplanes scattered across the floor he tried to begin a lesson on aerodynamics, despite his students still being new to the concepts of addition and subtraction.

He seems to be grading papers but the minute he sees her he sets aside his green felt-tip pin. And there it is: the warm eagerness about his eyes, the pleasantly surprised way he says her name. It leaves her incredulous every time. No one else has ever looked at her like that, and maybe he doesn’t mean it the way she thinks he does, but… maybe he does.

“Hi,” she says breathlessly, trying to be casual. It’s not like she never visits him at work. She’s here a lot, actually. Her ex hadn’t been too keen on that. (She thinks she understands why, now.) “Am I interrupting anything?”

“Grammar,” he sighs dramatically as she stops beside his desk. “Bane of my existence.”

“Ooh, can I do it?” she asks eagerly, forgetting herself. “I love grammar.”

He laughs and slides the papers towards her. “I’m sure this is breaking a dozen school codes, but, yeah, if you want.”

“No,” she stops herself abruptly, and Fitz’s eyebrows creep up as she clenches her fists. “I, well… I made you something.”

He takes the paper from her curiously. After a moment his mouth drops open but he still hasn’t said anything.

“Of course I feel ridiculous now, as I see you’ve redecorated, but last time I was here you had those little maps all over the wall, the countries made of different pasta, and, well – It’s you,” she explains. Her cheeks burn with embarrassment because how could she have thought this was the way to tell him? “With a little tie made of spaghetti, and your hair is fusilli–”

“Jemma, how much pasta did you waste making this?” he demands, even as he tenderly cradles the glue-and-noodle-festooned sheet. “Not that _this_ is a waste, but – The rest of the boxes?”

“Quite a lot,” she admits sheepishly, and he laughs. The sound makes her feel simultaneously better and like she’s going to vomit. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about, Fitz. Whether you might want to help me finish the pasta.”

“Yeah, alright,” he replies easily. As she watches, he gets up and pins her Pasta Fitz on the corkboard next to his desk. “What time?”

“No, I– Oh dear. I made notecards, I thought I’d do this as a presentation and you could pretend to give me a grade, but that sounds even worse than the artwork–”

“I _like_ the artwork,” he insists, sliding back into his chair but facing her so his knees just brush her skirt. “But it sounds like you’ve got some weird teacher-student fantasy kink, Simmons.”

“I don’t!” she protests. She’s fairly certain. She may need to explore that later, in depth, preferably with him. “I… I mean yes, you should come over and we should cook pasta but – I thought maybe – if you’d like – it could be a bit different than our normal dinners. Like… a date.”

If she weren’t petrified out of her mind that she’s irrevocably ruining the best friendship she has ever had and will ever have, his reaction would be comical. His foot slips off the rung of the chair and his eyes go very wide, his whole face seeming to freeze.

“A what?” he croaks.

“A date,” she repeats more firmly, because even if he says no, it’s out there now, and to backtrack will just further incriminate her. “If you’d like.”

“But…” He keeps smoothing his tie fretfully. She worries he’ll yank too hard and seriously hurt himself. “You just – you just broke up with–”

“I know, and I wasn’t going to say anything,” she interrupts him, remembering her ‘anticipated questions’ notes from her careful preparation the night before. “But I think if I go one more day without you knowing…. More than anything I need you to believe this isn’t some callous rebound. You are the most enchanting, infuriating, ridiculous, clumsy, compassionate, over-enthusiastic, intelligent person I know, and the mere prospect of a future with you is enough for me to reject a future with everyone else. I’m not…” She has to look away for this part. “I’m not asking you to marry me, or anything. But I’m not _opposed_ to the idea, and I think… I think that might be something worth exploring. If you’re not opposed either.”

Fitz, for some reason, is blinking up at the ceiling tiles and takes a while to respond. At last, he looks at her, a strange redness to the rims of his eyes, and chuckles hoarsely, “You memorized your notecards anyway, didn’t you?”

She shrugs. “Would you expect anything less?”

“No,” he murmurs, and his hands twitches on the desk as if he wants to reach for her. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“So…dinner?” she asks tentatively.

He’s still watching her, studying her for some sort of explanation, and though she wants him to want to dive into this as badly and as quickly as she does, maybe he needs time to catch up to her, maybe he hasn’t thought about her that way–

“Yes,” he says.

“Yes?”

“Yes. I’ll bring sauce? It sounds like you have the pasta covered.”

“Brilliant.” She’s testing her luck, but she adds, “Maybe… maybe no garlic bread? In case…”

She’s never known how easily she could make his eyes bug out of his head and she’s rather enjoying it.

“Yeah,” he agrees quickly. “In case.” 

Jemma is ten minutes later to her next meeting, but she whirls in with a giant grin, kisses the opposing counsel on the cheek, and hums to herself as she pulls out her paperwork, and no one can quite bring themselves to complain about her tardiness.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for wibbelkind!

Jemma’s stomach is all aflutter until she looks through the peephole in the door, and laughs.

“What?” Fitz’s voice calls through the wood, hovering at that intersection of amusement and offense. “Is there something on my nose? Is the sauce the wrong sort?”

In answer she opens the door so he can see her dress – black in the skirt, dark blue in the top – and he laughs too.

“Well, it’s certainly not the first time,” he grins, standing there in his black jeans and blue button-up, matching her exactly.

She steps aside to let him in, giving him more space than necessary because while they clearly established this is a _date_ (the word still sends something that feels a lot like Christmas morning all the way to her fingers and toes), everything is very new.

“And I spent so much time choosing it!” she sighs as he sets the tomato sauce on the counter next to the pot she’s just filled with pasta. “I feel a bit silly wearing a dress, it’s not exactly typical for me, and I fretted it would make this all seem so _serious_ and _important_ and maybe I should wear something more casual, but then I decided… Well, it is serious and important, isn’t it?”

He’s looking at her with the affectionate half-smile that means she’s rambling. People don’t normally like when she rambles.

“I think you look luminescent,” he says softly when she’s finished.

“Luminescent?” she chuckles, and he blushes, looks down at his shoes, but his mouth twitches and she knows he’s laughing at himself as well.

“I knew I’d get flustered the moment I saw you. Say something lame like ‘You look nice’. So I picked a word beforehand.”

“Fitz,” she says, if only because she feels she can say it in a new way now, imbuing it with the emotion it deserves. “You don’t have to be flustered with me.”

“I do, you know,” he murmurs, and if this thing between them weren’t so lusciously delicate right now, she’d go to him and take his face in her hands so she he can’t hide from her. She loves his eyes, even when – especially when? – they are vulnerable and wide and avoiding her gaze. “Like you said, this is important.”

This time she does take a step towards him, and the motion lifts his eyes to her, tracking up until he sees her watching him, anxious herself. “I had a thought about that, actually.”

“About—“

“About this all being so important, and us both being so nervous—“

“Both?” he interrupts, looking slightly heartened.

“Both,” she confirms. “But it’s not the actual date that’s terrifying – we’ve had dinner together a million times, we never run out of anything to say and more often than not you fall asleep and forget to go home. What’s different this time is the after.”

“The after?” Fitz repeats, voice slightly strangled.

“So I thought, if we can get that out of the way now, we could – we could eat our pasta, and joke, and be normal, and not be nervous.”

“So, we would—“ His brow furrows, and one hand slips off his waist as he tries to look like this is a totally normal proposition. “We would… em… kiss, then, or—“

“I think kissing’s a good place to start.”

“Right.” His gaze slips involuntarily to her lips and she’s now quite glad she decided to put on some chapstick before he arrived. “Then you could find out if I’m hopeless and toss me before this gets too far.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” Jemma assures him, sidling just a bit closer.

“You’re not?”

“Not a bit.”

She’s near enough for it now, close enough she could fiddle with a belt loop or the end of his sleeve where he’s rolled it up. But she won’t touch him, because she’s initiated every moment, every movement so far, and she wants him to be sure. She wants him to choose, not to just go along with her as he always does.

His breathing has grown pronouncedly ragged and his lips part as if he’s about to ask for further instructions. _Come on, Fitz_ , Jemma pleads in her mind, _we’ve waited long enough_.

When he finally leans in, the first touch of his lips is so soft Jemma nearly whimpers. He is gentle, because of course he is, gentle from nerves and from consideration for her. Like he’s giving her an out.

She tries to show him she has no intention of moving backwards.

His hand rises slowly, dreamily, and settles at her elbow, the other carefully finding her waist. Jemma grins into the kiss.

“What?” Fitz mumbles, even as he shuffles back so he can lean against the counter.

“You seem considerably less nervous now,” she teases. She won’t tell him now, but she’s brimming with unadulterated bliss. He is here. He wants this. They are _here_.

“This brilliant girl—” He kisses her, and she laughs and clutches his arms, “—had this brilliant idea—“ He kisses her again – “to keep my mind otherwise occupied.”

“If your mind is at all occupied, I’m clearly not doing my job properly,” she breathes, and then they stop talking until the pasta boils over.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unless I get additional specific requests, this is all I have planned! But it's a happy verse so always glad to expand.


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